Embodiments of the present invention relate to an improved method and system for facilitating display of information to a computer user.
Most hypertext-enabled systems in use today only support replacement links. Replacement links are often represented on a web page as underlined text colored so as to distinguish the replacement links from the other text and graphics being displayed on the web page. When a user selects the replacement link (e.g., using a mouse), the system completely replaces the content currently being displayed in the browser window with content retrieved from a destination node associated with the replacement link. For example, if the user selects a replacement link for the NASDAQ stock market from the home page for CNN""s Financial News Network, the home page for CNN""s Financial News Network will be completely replaced by the home page for the NASDAQ stock market.
While replacement links work well for displaying completely new information that is only weakly related to content currently being displayed in the browser window, it would be beneficial to provide an improved method and system for displaying information which is xe2x80x9ctightly coupledxe2x80x9d or strongly related to content currently displayed to the user.
Embodiments of the present invention provide an improved method and system for facilitating the display of information to a user, In one embodiment a popup window is used to display new information to a user viewing a web page. In the preferred embodiment, popup links are represented by a POPUP extension to the HTML language. For example, an HTML anchor utilizing the teachings and suggestions of the present invention may be written as:
 less than a href=http://foo.com/bar.html POPUP greater than  text of hotlink to display  less than /a greater than .
In a preferred embodiment, when a browser enabled to process a popup link encounters an HTML tag with a POPUP attribute, the browser performs the following steps: 1) the browser retrieves the file xe2x80x9cpage.htmlxe2x80x9d from the server xe2x80x9ccompany.comxe2x80x9d, 2) the browser renders the file page.html on a display device, 3) the browser then retrieves data associated with one or more popup links referenced in the retrieved file, such as a second file and any embedded objects referenced by the second file. When the browser receives an activation of the popup link the browser displays the retrieved data in a popup window on the display device.
The popup window of the present invention is especially useful for displaying new information which is xe2x80x9ctightly coupledxe2x80x9d or strongly related to the information currently displayed to the user because it allows the user to view the new information within the context of the currently displayed web page. For example, much information is in the nature of annotations or comments to some primary information and would be better displayed within the context of the primary page rather than within the context of a completely new page.
Popup links of the present invention are an improvement over xe2x80x9creplacement linksxe2x80x9d which completely replace a currently displayed web page with a new web page, because such complete replacement causes the user to lose the context within which the new information fits.
Notations and Nomenclature
The detailed descriptions which follow are presented largely in terms of methods and symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a computer. These method descriptions and representations are the means used by those skilled in the data processing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art.
A method is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desired result. These steps require physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It proves convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like. It should be bourne in mind, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities.
Useful machines for performing the operations of the present invention include general purpose digital computers or similar devices. The general purpose computer may be selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. A special purpose computer may also be used to perform the operations of the present invention. In short, use of the methods described and suggested herein is not limited to a particular computer configuration.